From Wikipedia the total annual cost of medicare (the australian national insurer) is about $18.3b, $900 - $1000 per person living in Australia. The graphs co

From Wikipedia the total annual cost of medicare (the australian national insurer) is about $18.3b, $900 - $1000 per person living in Australia. The graphs comparing total healthcare spending of various countries put Australia's at close to $3500 per capita, so medicare must only be part of the total. There are some funds going into health in one off ways like states funding hospitals, donations, people paying above medicare rebate amounts (usually about 30% more for GPs in my experience). There's drugs, some of which are subsidized. Then of course there's private insurance which a substantial portion of people have. I had private insurance for foreign students for a few years. From what I understood it's basically a tax administered by an insurance agency. Basically it's complicated and subsidized in all sorts of ways. It's like that in The States too. You can't just look at a doctor's bill or insurance premium in one place and assume that it's representing cost in some meaningful way.